NATO has secret plan to defend Baltics: WikiLeaks

LONDON (Reuters) - NATO has drawn up secret plans to defend the Baltic states against any Russian threat, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Tuesday, citing U.S. diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks.

The decision to draft contingency plans for the former Soviet states of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania was taken secretly earlier this year at the urging of the United States and Germany, ending years of division within the alliance over how to view Russia, the Guardian said.

In parallel talks with Warsaw, it said, Washington offered to beef up Polish security against Russia by deploying special naval forces to the Baltic ports of Gdansk and Gdynia, putting F-16 fighter aircraft in Poland and rotating C-130 Hercules transport planes into Poland from U.S. bases in Germany.

The details were drawn from 250,000 diplomatic cables obtained by the website WikiLeaks that are being made public.

NATO leaders were understood to have quietly endorsed the new strategy to defend vulnerable parts of eastern Europe at a summit in Lisbon last month, the Guardian said.

Russia's ambassador to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said his country was "puzzled" by the information, and he had sent a letter to NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and his American colleagues on Tuesday.

"If this information is true... we will ask our NATO partners, how this corresponds with the results of the Lisbon NATO summit, because NATO said it was no threat to Russia and saw Russia as its strategic partner. How come a defense plan from a strategic partner exists, then?

"We hope that NATO will take the decision to annul the defense plan ... based on the statements about strategic partnership made in Lisbon."

"APPROPRIATE PLANS"

NATO said it did not discuss the contents of confidential documents or defense plans.

"But NATO has always had and will continue to have appropriate plans to protect all allies. This is at the core of our collective defense task," a NATO spokeswoman said.

NATO and Russia pose no threat to each other and the alliance wants a "true strategic partnership" with Russia, she said.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange handed himself in to British police on Tuesday after Sweden issued a warrant for his arrest over allegations of sex crimes, police said.

In Lisbon last month, NATO and Russia agreed to cooperate on missile defense and other security issues, and hailed a new start in relations that have been strained since Russia's war with Georgia in 2008. U.S. President Barack Obama has a policy of "resetting" relations with Moscow.

The WikiLeaks cables point to underlying tension in the relationship between the former Cold War adversaries.

The plan entailed grouping the Baltic states with Poland in a new regional defense scheme codenamed Eagle Guardian, the paper said.

Poland, the Baltic states and others were rattled by Russia's brief war against Georgia and have been irked by large-scale Russian army exercises in Belarus and by Moscow's military doctrine that sees NATO expansion as a threat.

The Guardian said nine NATO divisions -- U.S., British, German and Polish -- had been identified for combat operations in the event of aggression against Poland or the Baltic states. Polish and German ports had been listed to receive naval assault forces and British and U.S. warships, the paper said.

(Additional reporting by Amie Ferris-Rotman in Moscow and Alexei Anishchuk in Brussels; editing by Tim Pearce)